


Nice and Simple

by sunlitroses



Series: The Voyager Knitting Club [2]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:01:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28161354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunlitroses/pseuds/sunlitroses
Summary: Harry would like it on the record that this was not his idea. At all.
Series: The Voyager Knitting Club [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2063085
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	Nice and Simple

“I’m going to need you to explain – in very small words – exactly what the two of you did.”

“I would like to, Captain,” Tom blanched at the look in her eye and hurried onward, “I really, really would. But I don’t, exactly, know. It shouldn’t have done this!” he waved at the bundle on the desk between them and then out towards the window of her Ready Room.

She restrained herself from looking out again. Even a stray glance was proving enough to captivate. The swirling patterns of – whatever was out there, in this piece of where ever they were, had an unsettling effect that could almost hypnotize the unwary member of the crew who happened to glance out a window.

“You must have done something,” she barked in exasperation. “We didn’t crash into another plane of reality just because we turned starboard. Ensign, anything to add?”

Harry, caught between looking miserably harassed and completely fascinated by the almost-planet-like object he could dimly see through the haze outside the window in the corner of his eye, shook his head. “We crossed one pattern with another, and then adjusted the parameters slightly, but nothing that should have been, um,” he glanced towards the window, wrenching his attention back with difficulty, “universe breaking. Theoretically.”

“Do you have copies of the final pattern?” the Captain asked through gritted teeth.

“Yes,” Harry nodded, and was about to offer to retrieve them when Tom coughed.

“About that,” he started, and Harry closed his eyes. Nothing good was going to come out of this. He didn’t know what Tom was about to say, but he knew it would be nothing good. “I was working on the combination one night and B’Elanna happened to see what I was working on.”

“Lieutenant Torres has been expressly banned from contributing to projects for a period of six months. Or until she can tell us how she set the last one on fire,” she sternly reminded him.

“Yes, and she wasn’t a part of it. At all. But she did have an idea about the materials. Just to increase tensile strength,” he defended against the twin looks of incredulity.

“Wait, I didn’t notice anything different about the materials,” Harry half-questioned, confused.

“It was a coating I was adding on after we finished each section, before we put them together.”

“And you didn’t think that you should tell me about it?”

“I didn’t think it would make a difference.”

“Maybe not with one or the other pattern - maybe not even mixed - but with the parameter adjustments, especially on the quantum level, who knows the effect it could have,” Harry actually felt, for the first time in his life, that the phrase ‘hot under the collar’ might be a literal statement. His turtleneck felt like it was about to strangle him.

“It was a small deviation, the principle was sound, and it made B’Elanna happy to think she was assisting. Remotely,” he stuck in, remembering her ban. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You do realize,” the Captain said, in tones of such biting sarcasm that Tom could almost feel his spine withering, “that question has ceased to be rhetorical?”

Glancing at the window, he wilted further. “Yes. Yes, I do now.”

“Bring me the final pattern as well as the – additives. Perhaps the,” she paused, while both officers waited to see if she would attempt the unpronounceable name of the inhabitants of this strange plane they found themselves in. “Perhaps our hosts,” she amended, “will take this as proof that we did not intentionally become lodged in their upper atmosphere. Or whatever the equivalent of an atmosphere is here, given that our sensors are reading it as having the chemical composition of gumdrops. Hopefully they will also have some ideas as to how to return us. Oh, and gentlemen?”

Both had relaxed upon sensing a dismissal somewhere in their near future. The casual addition of her last statement, however, brought them back to full attention.

“You can join B’Elanna on the banned list. Six months or until you figure out how you did this. And, more importantly, how to keep it from ever happening again. Dismissed.”

In the corridor, safely away from the door, Harry elbowed Tom sharply in the side.

“Hey!”

“Don’t even start. You tampered with the project without even telling me?”

“I didn’t think it would actually do anything! Maybe waterproofing. B’Elanna’s still put out that she’s banned, I didn’t want to make it worse by not using her idea.”

“Great thinking. Now we’re all banned.” Harry sighed. “All I wanted,” he muttered mournfully as they came to a stop in front of the turbolift, “was to make a nice, simple project.”

“You can get nice and simple anywhere, Harry. A quantum-laced, four dimensional experiment, though – now that screams innovation and Delta Quadrant chic.”

“Actually what it screams is reality-bending, alternate planes of existence, as it turns out. Thanks for that experience.” The lift doors opened. “In six months, I’m going back to nice and simple. Assuming that they let us back in when the six months are up.”

“Are you kidding?” Tom tossed an arm over Harry’s shoulders. “We achieved a feat unparalleled by anyone in the group, heck probably anyone in the Alpha Quadrant, or even the universe. We’re explorers, remember? Once we figure out this little hiccup, they’ll want us to give a lecture.”

Harry jabbed Tom in the ribs again. “No way, Paris. We aren’t ‘figuring out this hiccup,’ we’re stopping.”

“Stopping?” Tom wheezed, holding a hand to his side. “Where would we be if the Wright brothers had stopped? If Captain James T. Kirk had packed it in? If Tesla decided this whole ‘electricity’ thing was too much of a bother? You can’t quit in the face of the unknown, Harry. You’re a _Starfleet officer_.”

Rubbing a hand over his face, Harry sighed. “I just wanted to make a scarf.”

“And instead we discovered a whole new plane of existence. You’ve gotta dream big. You’ll see,” Tom crossed his arms in satisfaction as the doors closed, “in six months the Voyager Knitting Club will be begging us to come back.”

**Author's Note:**

> Because Loupdeloup asked me to 'make it sew,' this is a very silly addition to my previous knit-centric story. :D
> 
> Does this mean that there's now a Voyager Knit-verse? I'm unsure how many stories you have to have to make a 'verse.' I'm also not sure I'm ready for a universe where they're all equipped with knitting needles.


End file.
